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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reflections On Contracts In The Real World: History, Currency, Context, And Other Values, Lawrence A. Cunningham
Reflections On Contracts In The Real World: History, Currency, Context, And Other Values, Lawrence A. Cunningham
Washington Law Review
It is gratifying to read that this symposium issue of the Washington Law Review was stimulated by Contracts in the Real World. Thanks to the editors for the opportunity to ruminate on the place of the book’s approach—stressing context through stories—in the tradition of contracts pedagogy. To that end, Part I first pinpoints relevant historical milestones in the field of contracts casebooks. Building on that historical grounding, Part II then highlights the values of currency and context that the stories approach epitomizes. Turning more speculative, Part III considers the value of this approach from the perspective of the purpose …
Contract Stories: Importance Of The Contextual Approach To Law, Larry A. Dimatteo
Contract Stories: Importance Of The Contextual Approach To Law, Larry A. Dimatteo
Washington Law Review
How law is taught is at the center of the debate over the need to change legal education to better prepare students for a difficult and changing marketplace for legal services. This Article analyzes the benefits of using “stories” to teach law. The stories to be discussed relate to contract law: this Article asks whether they can be used to improve the method and content of teaching law. The ruminations offered on teaching contract law, however, are also relevant to teaching other core, first-year law courses.
Cases And Controversies: Some Things To Do With Contracts Cases, Charles L. Knapp
Cases And Controversies: Some Things To Do With Contracts Cases, Charles L. Knapp
Washington Law Review
As a co-author of one of the two dozen or more currently-in-print Contracts casebooks, I obviously have both a point of view about, and a personal stake in, the survival of this particular method of instruction. Whether the legal casebook—or any other book, in the form of bound sheets of paper—will remain a part of our academic culture much longer is clearly up for grabs, however. Electronic records have so many advantages over the printed page that, at least for many purposes, they will surely become the dominant form of preserving, retrieving, and transmitting information, if indeed they are not …
Unilateral Reordering In The Reel World, Jake Linford
Unilateral Reordering In The Reel World, Jake Linford
Washington Law Review
Professor Larry Cunningham’s new book, Contracts in the Real World, demonstrates that there is much to learn about contract law from a few well-chosen stories. The goal of this Essay is to provide a similar service, relying on stories gleaned from movies and television—contracts in the “reel world,” so to speak—to illustrate and then undermine the traditional stories told about contract formation and modification. We can learn much from the scenes discussed herein about how consumers might be led to think contracts are formed, and perhaps misled about the certainty contracts provide.
The Perspective Of Law On Contract, Aditi Bagchi
The Perspective Of Law On Contract, Aditi Bagchi
Washington Law Review
What is the perspective of law on contract? This Article will consider two dimensions of the perspective we offer students. Part I will consider how we present the nature of contract law. That is, it will explore the extent to which traditional methods of teaching unduly underplay indeterminacy and disagreement. In that Part I distinguish between inductive and deductive legal reasoning and suggest we may give short shrift to the former in teaching. Part II will consider the attitude of the law toward contract as a social practice. Here I distinguish between internal and external perspectives on law and suggest …
Contract Texts, Contract Teaching, Contract Law: Comment On Lawrence Cunningham, Contracts In The Real World, Brian H. Bix
Contract Texts, Contract Teaching, Contract Law: Comment On Lawrence Cunningham, Contracts In The Real World, Brian H. Bix
Washington Law Review
Lawrence Cunningham’s Contracts in the Real World offers a good starting place for necessary conversations about how contract law should be taught, and, more generally, for when and how cases—in summary form or in longer excerpts—are useful in teaching the law. This Article tries to offer some reasons for thinking that their prevalence may reflect important truths about contract law in particular and law and legal education in general.
Contract As Pattern Language, Erik F. Gerding
Contract As Pattern Language, Erik F. Gerding
Washington Law Review
This essay examines how patterns enable the transformation of contractual provisions into contracts, contracts into transactions, and transactions into markets. Although contract design patterns are broader than contract boilerplate (as described in Part II.C. below), some of the extensive legal scholarship on boilerplate19 helps explain how contract patterns generate agreements, transactions, and markets. The work of Henry Smith on the modularity of contract boilerplate proves particularly useful in this regard. Contract patterns perform several functions. Contract patterns break complex problems and bargains into components. Attorneys can then repeatedly apply these particular solutions to similar problems. Patterns also serve as heuristics …
Unpopular Contracts And Why They Matter: Burying Langdell And Enlivening Students, Jennifer S. Taub
Unpopular Contracts And Why They Matter: Burying Langdell And Enlivening Students, Jennifer S. Taub
Washington Law Review
Thus, the purpose of this piece is to provide an alternative: a transformation of how Contracts is taught in law schools so that we meet a variety of educational objectives. This is less of a prescription than it is a resolution made in the public sphere: a promise to shake things up in my own classroom and thus hopefully do better by students in the long run. It is also the beginning of a search to benchmark against the practices of others, and to seek input from those who have already begun to transform their Contracts teaching materials and methods. …
Washington's Electronic Signature Act: An Anachronism In The New Millennium, Stephanie Curry
Washington's Electronic Signature Act: An Anachronism In The New Millennium, Stephanie Curry
Washington Law Review
Today, electronic contracting is at the forefront of how consumers, governments, and businesses conduct their affairs. Over the last several decades, electronic contracting has taken on new forms that have raised doubts about contract formation and enforceability. In order to facilitate commerce, the federal government and forty-nine states have responded by passing legislation that gives broad legal recognition to electronic signatures. Washington State is currently the only state that has not updated its electronic signature statute to comport with modern technology and ways of doing business. As a result, Washington’s Electronic Authentication Act is likely preempted by federal law, and …